Phillips Collection has been defining global style for over thirty-seven years with our award-winning, organic contemporary furnishings. We are a to-the-trade-only company. If you are an interior designer, retailer, or design firm, come see us at one of our flagship showrooms around the country. We have locations in Atlanta, Dallas, High Point, Laguna, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York. If you are a consumer, you can find our products at fine furniture dealers around the world. We do a lot of commercial work as well, so there’s a good chance you’ve seen us at the movies or on TV, as well as at your favorite hotels, restaurants, bars and nightclubs! We would love to take you through and show you our latest and bestselling collections. We have a special range of eco-friendly furniture where not a single tree is cut down called the Origins Collection. See truly unique, fun pieces that are designed by artists and artisans from around the world. Every piece a conversation.
Larry Phillips (1917 to 2013)
Never one to shy away from connecting dots, even if they are 12,000 miles apart!
If you asked Larry Phillips what he was, he’d say a business man. If you asked anyone who knew Larry what he was, the answer would be more like ‘tastemaker’ or ‘visionary’.
Larry was born in New York in 1917 and attended Brooklyn College where he graduated at the age of 19. He then went to serve his country in Germany during WWII, where his platoon was amongst the first US troops to invade the concentration camps. He came back to join a fledgling dress business with his father and brother after the war. They evolved into manufacturing and began to travel to Hong Kong in the late 60’s. At this point, Larry’s wife Shirley Phillips joined the company and together they started selling to high end department stores like Bloomingdales. Running a factory in Hong Kong kept the pair traveling around the world. They would collect beautiful objects from amazing countries most of us hadn’t heard of at the time and surely couldn’t point to on a map; Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos. Friends would visit their home on Long Island and see the most wonderful furniture and décor pieces and were enthralled, not only by the design and craftsmanship, but by the stories Larry and Shirley would tell. The iconography, motif and trips through the jungles of Indonesia to reach the one village that was carving stones with a magic moving center into what they call the Kalimantan Egg. As they developed a sophisticated eye for antiquities, they became prominent NY dealers in Asian fine arts. They sold to the Met, LACMA, Chicago Art Institute, British Museum and the Stuttgart Museum. They saw great opportunity to bring this global style to the furniture industry and asked their son Mark and his wife Julie to join them on a trip around the world.
And so in 1983, Phillips Collection was founded…
It all started nearly fifty years ago, when Larry and Sherry Phillips decided to fulfil a long-held desire to travel the world. It changed their lives forever, and they left their New York business to become collectors and dealers of ancient Asian art. When their entrepreneur son Mark married a young Romanian architect named Julie, the couple joined them in their travels. Together, they created a company dedicated to bringing beautifully designed antiques, artifacts and hand-crafted objects to the interior design trade. Intrepid explorers and adventurers, they grew the Phillips Collection into an important design resource, searching the globe to discover the beautiful, the unusual and the unique.
When son Jason joined the business after graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in Industrial Design, it was the start of a new era. Jason made his mark by taking the traditional skills and natural materials that Phillips Collection was known for, and utilizing them to create innovative contemporary home furnishings. Jason has received numerous accolades for his work, and is the youngest person to receive both the ARTS award for Product Designer of the Year, and the Pinnacle Award given by the American Society of Furniture Designers.
The circle was completed when daughter Jessica joined the company to develop the hospitality division. With a Master’s degree from Columbia University, she had worked for the Discovery Channel and for a high profile New York marketing firm before finding her place in the family business.
From its beginnings in art and artifacts, to its present incarnation as a source for innovative, award-winning contemporary design, Phillips Collection has always occupied a unique niche. Over the past thirty-seven years, the business has continued to evolve to meet the changing needs of its design customers. With each new generation, it is renewed and reinvented, never forgetting its core commitment to art and design.
Check out our website to see the many fascinating pieces by Phillips Collection we carry, and if you are interested, browse the Phillips Collection website to see the many thousands of available products available via special order.
